Walking in communion and friendship with others

Oct 30, 2015

By David Gibson
There are profound theological reasons why the bonds of communion among the Church’s people matter so much, bonds given birth by baptism into Christ’s body. Together, the members of Christ’s body continue his work in the world now. But keeping things simple during his journey, Pope Francis talked about the need to assure that these bonds of communion are plain to see. He said to the US bishops at St Matthew’s Cathedral, Washington.

“The world is already so torn and divided, brokenness is now everywhere. Consequently, the Church, ‘the seamless garment of the Lord,’ cannot allow herself to be rent, broken or fought over.”

The Church’s unity, however, is not a stark abstraction unrelated to people’s lives. It is important that the Church “be a humble home, a family fire that attracts men and women through the attractive light and warmth of love,” the Pope said. For “we know well how much darkness and cold there is in this world,” as well as the “loneliness and the neglect” so many experience and “their fear in the face of life.”

It is “only a Church that can gather around the family fire” that will “attract others,” Pope Francis added. This cannot be just “any fire,” however. It is the fire and light of Christ. This light, he stressed, should not be hidden. It should radiate everywhere. Thus, while one goal is to assure strong bonds of love and warmth among the Church’s people, another goal is to create what Pope Francis called “social friendship” with others. If the Church’s diverse people need each other, the people of the larger society, diverse in other noteworthy ways, need others, too.

Pope Francis discussed this point with Cuban youths when he spoke Sept 20 at a Catholic cultural centre in Cuba’s capital city. The youths included Catholics, followers of other faiths and nonbelievers. He told the youths of “an African proverb that says, ‘If you want to go quickly, walk alone, but if you want to go far, walk with another.’” Despite all their “different ways of thinking and seeing things,” he wanted the youths “to walk with others, together, looking for hope, seeking the future.”

The secret of social friendship, “where everyone works for the common good,” is to talk with each other and to become life-givers, Pope Francis suggested to the youths. He asked, “If you are different than I am, then why don’t we talk? Why do we always throw stones at one another over what separates us, what makes us different?”

The approach to social friendship proposed by the Pope was to “try to speak about what we have in common” and only after that to discuss “where we differ.”

For Pope Francis, encountering others is Christlike, a way to resemble Christ, who became our companion. Later in his journey, during a Mass celebrated in New York’s Madison Square Garden, the Pope returned to this theme. God, he said, “walks at our side,” freeing us “from anonymity” and bringing us “to the school of encounter.” God “removes us from the fray of competition and self-absorption.”

Pope Francis drove home the point that “God and the Church, living in our cities, want to be like yeast in the dough, to relate to everyone, to stand at everyone’s side.” But to stand at everyone’s side requires the kinds of encounters with others that became a theme of the Pope’s journey. Few people, however, find it easy at all times to encounter and extend a heartfelt welcome to others who truly differ from them in some significant way.

This is why the existing bonds among the Church’s people always need strengthening and the challenge of constructing social friendship always remains a work in progress. What is required, Pope Francis suggested when he visited Holguin, Cuba, is a new way of seeing others, seeing as Jesus sees.

Because Jesus casts a gaze of love upon others, “he can see beyond appearances, beyond sin, beyond failures and unworthiness. He sees beyond our rank in society.” In this way, he recognizes everyone’s dignity. Jesus’ love “pushes us … not to be satisfied with appearances,” the Pope explained. Jesus sees the enduring dignity “in the depth” of every person’s soul.

In fact, Jesus “came precisely to seek out all those who feel unworthy of God” and who even feel “unworthy of others.”